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Monday, 1 February 2016

Why Britain Stop Being a Poodle and Became a Whore

Donald, “Prime
Minister, would you keep the UK in the EU for five billion euros?” David, “My
goodness, Mr Tusk…we would have to discuss terms of course”. Donald, “Would you
keep the UK in the EU for five euros?” David: “Mr Tusk, what kind of politician
do you think I am?” Donald, “Prime Minister, we’ve already established that.
Now we are haggling about the price”.

Dinner in Downing
Street between David Cameron and Donald Tusk, 31 January, 2016 after the story
about Winston Churchill and a particularly flexible socialite.

Alphen, Netherlands.1 February. Londonistan,
Londongrad, Lonjing. With David Cameron and Donald Tusk now negotiating a form of words to mask London’s Great EU Climb-down it is reasonable to ask when
and why Britain stopped being a poodle and became a whore? Now, I do not want to
tar the world’s oldest profession with the untrustworthy brush of the world’s second oldest,
so a precise definition here is vital. A whore is a man or woman who sells their
body to the highest bidder in return for immediate sexual gratification. A
whore state is one in which its leaders sell the body politic to the highest
bidder for immediate financial and/or political gratification at the expense of
the long-term interests of the country, its friends, and its allies.

In January 1942 the Americans
effectively established de facto control over British foreign and security
policy. Over the following sixty-five years the British became so dependent on
American leadership, and indeed money, that London became little more than a
gilded, collared bouffant poodle that the Americans occasionally took out for
walks. It was called the ‘special relationship’. Still, at least Washington for
the most part treated London with respect, more respect than on many occasions the British deserved. No more. Britain has to a significant extent abandoned that
relationship in favour of a new set of financial relationships with illiberal
powers that can only be described as a form of strategic whoredom. Indeed, under
David Cameron London has effectively abandoned any pretence to foreign policy principle
in favour of short-term cynicism, manipulation of public opinion, and narrow
mercantilism. Three recent events testify to Britain’s loss of virtue.

Londonistan: Parliament will soon have to vacate Gilbert Scott’s
magnificent 1839 Palace of Westminster as a massive programme of refurbishment begins that could last up to six years and cost £4bn.
One of the buildings ear-marked to host Parliament during this
‘interregnum’ is Richmond House, some 100 metres from Westminster and slap-bang
in the middle of Whitehall. The problem for
traditionally boozy MPs is that alcohol is to be banned in Richmond House. This
is because in 2014 Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne quietly handed
the building over to Middle Eastern investors under the terms of an Islamic
bond, otherwise known as a sukkuk. One of the terms of the lease is that the
building must operate under sharia law. Consequently, the presence and
consumption of alcohol will be banned to MPs should Richmond House be used as
an alternative Parliament. Just how many other British institutions now operate
under such a ridiculous regime?

Londongrad: The publication of the report of a full public inquiry
into the 2006 murder of Russian émigré Alexander Litvinenko by Russian agents should
have been a landmark moment in British foreign policy. At the very least Cameron should have
immediately moved to expel the Russian ambassador, many of the now Cold War level
of Russian spies operating in London, and sought to increase sanctions against
the Putin regime. Instead, apart from a risible statement by Home Secretary
Therese May in Parliament, Cameron did all he could to kill the story and
quickly. Why? Simple. Russian oligarchs have invested billions in the City of
London over the past twenty years. President Putin controls the oligarchs, ergo
President Putin controls the City of London. Even though the Russian economy
slid by some 8% last year Putin increased defence spending by some 28% safe in
the belief that for all the rhetoric to the contrary he has Britain by the
financial balls. Will Britain ever stand up to Russian bullying?

Lonjing: The culmination of
President Xi Jingping’s October 2015 state visit to Britain was some £40bn
worth of trade deals. Known as the Grand
Kowtow under the deal a Chinese state-owned company is to be allowed to
build and control three nuclear power plants across England. MI5 was so
concerned that Britain’s spies went public and warned that London could never
be sure what software would be inserted by the Chinese. During the visit
China’s daily industrial levels of cyber-attack on Britain subsided for a few
days. However, even as President Xi stepped onto British soil an American
warship was undertaking a freedom of navigation cruise to uphold the right of
free movement under international law in the South China Sea, which Beijing is
determined to establish as an exclusive economic and security zone. In a
confrontation between Britain’s main liberal ally and a main illiberal investor
what side would Britain choose?

One of the many paradoxes of
David Cameron’s very paradoxical premiership is the extent to which a powerful
Britain behaves like a weak Britain. Some commentators have put this down
to post-crash economic fragility and post-Scottish independence referendum
political fragility. Both factors can go some way to exploring Cameron’s
retreat from influence, the strategic pretence which has marked his
premiership, and the often massive gap between what he says and what he means.

However, Britain’s strategic
malaise also reaches deep into the culture of contemporary British government.
Mix the Cameron/Osborne policy of narrow mercantilism with a Whitehall
bureaucracy that champions management over strategy, and in particular the
management and culture of decline, and the reason why Britain continues to
retreat and decline beyond the necessary becomes sadly apparent.

Indeed, Britain has become like Christopher
Marlowe’s Dr Faustus with David Cameron selling Britain’s body politic to an
array of devils in return for short-term political gratification and foreign
policy destroying financial investment. If there is no such thing as a free
lunch in politics, there is certainly no such thing as a free nuclear power
station. If this is a foretaste of Britain’s brave new globalised world outside
of the EU then I am not at all sure I want it.

David Cameron and George Osborne
are far too interested in, and close to, big illiberal money, and are far too willing
to pay whatever price to kowtow to it. The result is a country that might
appear to be one of the world’s strongest, but in fact is most decidedly not.
This sad truth was reinforced last week by a laughable tax deal for Britain with
technology giant Google whereby the latter would pay the former some £130m for
over £24 billion of earnings in the UK. San Lonfrisco?

So, when David Cameron eventually
steps down in 2018 or 2019 he will leave Britain a toxic and cynical foreign
policy legacy which will not only make Britain more insecure, but undermine
both NATO and the EU. Sooner or later there is going to be a real reckoning
between American-led liberal power and Chinese and Russian-inspired illiberal
power. When that moment comes, as it must, the very real danger exists that Britain
will be hors de combat because
Cameron and Osborne abandoned foreign policy principle having sold the British
body politic down the wadi, as well as the Moscow and Yangtze Rivers.

In Faustus’s final hour as he
prepares to complete the contract he signed in blood when he sold his soul to the
devil he watches with creeping despair as the minute hand of a clock ticks
slowly by. “Oh lente, lente, currite noctis equis”, he pleads. Oh slowly,
slowly run the horse of the night. At one point over dinner Donald Tusk, sorry Mephistopheles,
pleads with David Cameron, sorry Faustus, “Oh David, forget these frivolous
demands which strike a terror to my fainting soul”.

About Me

Julian Lindley-French is Senior Fellow of the Institute of Statecraft, Director of Europa Analytica & Distinguished Visiting Research Fellow, National Defense University, Washington DC. An internationally-recognised strategic analyst, advisor and author he was formerly Eisenhower Professor of Defence Strategy at the Netherlands Defence Academy,and Special Professor of Strategic Studies at the University of Leiden. He is a Fellow of Respublica in London, and a member of the Strategic Advisory Group of the Atlantic Council of the United States in Washington.
Latest books: The Oxford Handbook on War 2014 (Paperback) (2014; 709 pages). (Oxford: Oxford University Press) & "Little Britain? Twenty-First Strategy for a Middling European Power". (www.amazon.com)
The Friendly-Clinch Health Warning: The views contained herein are entirely my own and do not necessarily reflect those of any institution.